LA Observed has good fun with weather speak in today’s forecast of Santa Ana winds for Southern California. For those interested in how greater Los Angeles, a place that is often mistaken as desert, but is not (yet), gets intermittent breaths out of the actual deserts of the Great Basin and Mojave, click here for a good explanatory page from a California and federal climate project. A favorite meteorologist (among other things) who blogs as Bad Mom, Good Mom, sent this UCLA link explaining Santa Anas, which opens with this Raymond Chandler excerpt from Red Wind: “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”